Cardinal dies at 81; kept faith amid tribulation, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis praised the late Australian Cardinal George Pell as a faithful servant of God and of the Catholic Church, who steadfastly followed the Lord even “in the hour of trial” when he was jailed for sexual abuse before his conviction was overturned by Australia’s highest court.

Cardinal Pell died in Rome Jan. 10 at the age of 81 after suffering a heart attack following hip replacement surgery.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, was scheduled to preside over the cardinal’s funeral Jan. 14 at St. Peter’s Basilica with Pope Francis presiding over the final commendation and farewell at the end of the Mass. Cardinal Pell will be buried at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney Feb. 2, according to his secretary, Father Joseph Hamilton.

In an interview with Italy’s “Mediaset” broadcast Dec. 18, Pope Francis was asked what part of his job he would have preferred not having had to deal with, and he responded, the Vatican’s financial chaos and scandals.

The need for a thorough clean up “was clearly seen by Cardinal Pell, who is the one who started” making progress, the pope said, but then he was required to return to Australia “because of this calumny” of being accused of sexual abuse.

“He was innocent,” Pope Francis said in the December interview. “He is a great man, and we owe him so much.”

Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, former president of the conference, said, Cardinal Pell “didn’t claim to be a saint; he knew he was flawed. But he did claim -- and rightly -- to be a man of faith and a man of the Church.”

Cardinal Pell “became the victim of an outrageous injustice as he was convicted and jailed for 13 months before a final vindication,” Archbishop Coleridge said, referring to the cardinal’s conviction in late 2018 on five counts of sexual abuse. The cardinal had served more than 400 days of a six-year sentence when the judges of the High Court of Australia overturned the conviction, concluding there was “a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof.”

“The spiritual poise and strength he showed through all of this was extraordinary,” Archbishop Coleridge said. “It revealed a depth to George Pell that often went unrecognized.”

“Through his legal troubles,” the archbishop said, “he was identified wholly with the Catholic Church and vice versa. Pell was the Church, and the Church was Pell -- big, powerful and heartless in the eyes of many.

“Yet,” he continued, “if George Pell

Cardinal George Pell was a dear friend of and frequent visitor to the Pontifical North American College. In 2015, then Msgr. James Checchio, rector of PNAC, presented Cardinal Pell with the “Rector’s Award” for his service to the Church and the College.

— Pontifical North American College photo had anything they were a good heart and a sense of humor. It was a pity that more of this didn’t show in his media appearances.”

Born June 8, 1941, in Ballarat, Australia, he was a star football player in high school and college, but left that behind to enter the seminary, studying first in Australia and then at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1966 at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

Then-Pope, now St. John Paul II appointed him an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne in 1987, archbishop of Melbourne in 1996, archbishop of Sydney in 2001 and gave him the cardinal’s red hat in 2003.

Soon after his election, Pope Francis named Cardinal Pell to his international Council of Cardinals to advise him on the reform of the Roman Curia and, in 2014, Pope Francis named him prefect of the new Council for the Economy.

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